The Fall of Man
by Flamewulf
Summary: Based on the account of Genesis, when mankind fell from grace.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's note: I do not own Philip Pullman's works, nor the Bible ...** Enjoy!

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The Fall of Man

The Man was ecstatic. He had everything that he could possibly have – a beautiful wife, a wonderful home, abundant food freely available, and they walked with God every day – ah, what more could one possibly want? The Man sighed contently. His dæmon changed from a beautiful gazelle into a playful otter and immediately changed again, this time into a sprightly gaudily coloured songbird, which gave a quick burst of cheerful song. A joyful animal cry caught his attention.

A wolf loped out of the trees, saw the Man and wagged its tail. Then _she_, the one who was the love of his life, appeared just after her dæmon. The Man's breath was, as always, taken away by the beauty of this wonder that was his most cherished gift.

"Woman," he breathed.

Her eyes twinkled merrily as she walked slowly, sensuously towards him. Then she was gathered up in his arms and he was deeply drinking in her scent. Their two dæmons were in the form of great cats, lovingly rubbing and licking one another, their loud purrs ringing through the treetops.

The couple turned and walked waist-to-waist down to the bank of the meandering sparkling river.

In the distance they saw the unreal shimmer in the sunlight of the foliage of the Tree of Life and the beautifully coloured fruit of the Tree of - what was it? – Knowledge of Good and Evil.

The Woman wondered for what felt like the millionth time what was meant by this 'Knowledge'. In a quiet voice she said to her husband, "I want to go to the middle of the garden."

The Man knew immediately what the Woman meant. She wanted to look at the Trees again. And why shouldn't she? The Trees had an otherworldly beauty about them, unusual beauty that the other trees in the Garden, while glorious and beautiful in their own way, did not reflect.

The dæmons transformed once more into lively songbirds, flitting from branch to branch above the Man and Woman's heads as they strolled along to the heart of the Garden, where the Man has once lain in sleep, only to wake up to a Woman next to him, and where they had, in the recent past, got to know each other intimately.

The Woman stood, entranced, as she gazed up at the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The Man was chatting with his dæmon, which was in the form of a fox, lying in the lush grass. The Woman held up her hand and her butterfly-dæmon alighted on her fingers.

Suddenly she saw a flash of mottled brown and her dæmon darted up, startled. The Man and his dæmon looked up at the motion.

Relief crossed his wife's face. "It was just a snake," she smiled. The Man nodded, and then he too saw the reptile.

They looked at the snake. The snake looked back, and the couple were surprised to perceive the keen intelligence behind its flat lidless eyes.

The snake turned away from them and climbed up the tree, its sinuous body winding itself around the slim trunk and pausing occasionally to look back at the two, who were still watching it. It reached the base of the branches and slithered along until it could look down at them.

Then it spoke.


	2. Chapter 2

"Do I understand that God told you not to eat from any tree in the garden?"

The Man, Woman and their dæmons glanced at one another before the Woman answered.

"Not at all. We _can_ eat from the trees in the Garden. It's only this tree and the other -" she pointed at the Tree of Life – "that we may not partake of. Because we know from God that if we did, we would die."

"Is that so?" replied the snake, a touch of deliberation inflected in its tone.

The Man felt a small, cold sensation in the pit of his stomach. He did not know how or why, but he felt that something was happening, and he didn't know what.

"Well, well, well …" The serpent above him fixed its beady gaze on the Woman.

"I have heard differently. Indeed, you will not die. Verily, I say unto you that if you partake of this glorious fruit, you will see what is really going on. You will be like God!"

The Man could not believe his ears. _What a blasphemous thing to say!_ He did not believe it. The Woman's expression revealed to him her doubt; he decided that he would not leave straight away, and he believed that he could let his wife listen so that she could see for herself the absurdity of the serpent's claims.

The snake motioned with its head to a nearby fruit and its tongue seemed to dart out to touch the skin of the fruit briefly before it returned its gaze to the Woman's upturned face.

"You see, God knows that the moment you eat from this tree, you will gain all knowledge, ranging all the way from good to evil."

Doubt and confusion chased themselves around in the Woman's mind. She did not like the snake's words, but she did not know what to do. She looked at the fruit and bit her lip. Countless times she had looked at the fruit on their previous visits and admired the fair shape. But if what the snake said was true …

She squeezed her eyes shut. Then she glanced at her shivering dæmon, which was back in its wolf form, its ears turned back and not daring to look at anybody.

Then she looked up at the fruit again.

Irrational greed rushed through the Woman, sweeping aside all traces of doubt, washing all traces of caution and reasoning from her mind. She reached up with her hand.

The Man's insides gnawed at him. His bull dæmon was uttering pained cries and tossing its horns anxiously. He felt paralysed. The Woman – his Woman! – was choosing the first of the two available options: follow the serpent's suggestion, or turn away. The Man was affected by the serpent's words, even though he knew that what the serpent claimed was falsehood.

And yet. And yet …

He watched as the Woman took hold of the fruit, tightened her grip on it, and plucked it from the tree. An unnatural glitter shone from her eyes as she brought the wondrous fruit to her lips and bit into it.

Then she saw her husband, and by impulse, held it out to him.

The Man was in a daze. She had eaten some of the fruit, and yet she was still alive …

He took it from her and also bit into the sweet flesh, chewing and swallowing it.

The Man and Woman stood there for a moment, not quite taking in what they had just done. Suddenly their vision seemed to darken; the colours began to lose their intensity and the cries of the wild animals around them became forbidding, threatening.

Fear began to rise up within each of them as they listened to those creatures without. They felt naked, vulnerable, and defenseless. They looked fearfully at one another, and then looked down at their dæmons. Both dæmons were quivering, cowering; a shocking sight. The Man's dæmon's flank twitched, and he then knew the full meaning of horror. His dæmon was now a bull forever; it could not change anymore. The Woman burst into tears as she too realised her wolf dæmon could not change; it uttered a terrible howl.

They felt alone. So incredibly and horribly alone. They feared the thought of God visiting them again. They had disobeyed Him and were utterly ashamed and disappointed with themselves; how could they face Him?

Death. This was death. This was what God had meant by death; total, utter estrangement from that which they knew and loved best.


	3. Chapter 3

Tears flowing down their faces, the Man and the Woman glanced about blindly and saw a fig tree; they stumbled over to it and violently ripped several branches off the trunk. They stripped the leaves and the Man punctured the edges with holes from a sharp-pointed stick, and then helped the Woman sew the leaves together with stringy plant fibres. Hopefully the rough garments they were making would hide the fact that they were naked and vulnerable.

Suddenly they heard the sound of someone walking through tall grass. The Man and his wife threw panicked glances at one another. It was _Him!_

They stood up hastily and ran together, their mewling dæmons besides them, away, away from the direction the noise was coming from.

The Woman grabbed at her husband's arm and gestured towards a large wild olive. They climbed up, the Man pulling the less nimble Woman up as her belly was swelling and made it awkward for her to climb; however, their frightened dæmons were unable to change from their terrestrial forms and were unable to climb up with them. Both the Man and the Woman gasped with pain and found they could not climb any higher.

They heard a far-off voice.

"Where are you?"

The Man swallowed as he looked at his wife's fearful face. Hastily wiping a drop of sweat from his brow, he looked out from his vantage point in the tree, cleared his throat and cried back in reply; he figured that it would be the better part of discretion to answer than to pretend not to hear.

"I heard you in the garden …" he panted, " … and I was afraid, because I'm naked." Adam swallowed again as he scanned the surroundings. "So I hid."

The Man nearly fell from the tree in shock as the voice replied, this time sounding as if the speaker was under the very tree they were hiding in! There had been no noise at all.

Sure enough, there He was, standing quietly and watching them solemnly with those eyes of His. The couple shivered. Those eyes were usually full of laughter and joy; now they seemed to harbour a terrible sadness that the couple could only guess at. The One they knew as God extended His hands as if He was inviting them to drop and He would catch them. Only now in their deathlike state did they notice the wounds in His palms. They had seen these wounds before but had never stopped to ask what caused them; somehow, now they instantly knew that they had played a part in the cause of those wounds. They climbed down the tree by themselves and held themselves as if they were cold.

The grave tone of God's voice was complemented by His stern expression. "Who told you that you were naked, Adam? Did you eat from that tree I told you not to eat from?"

The Man shrivelled from inside. His mind's eye flashed an image of his wife; in a rush, in an accusing tone he blamed her, saying, "This, this - woman you gave me … she took the fruit from the tree and ate it! And … and … yes, I - I also a-ate it," he finished with a falter, his eyes filling up with hot, ashamed tears.

Sorrow and compassion filled God's face as He gazed at the pair and their dejected dæmons.

Quietly He asked the Woman, "What is this you've done?"

She could not hold back her tears and sobbed. God moved to hold her, to comfort her, but she lashed out hysterically, she pushed away. Through her sobs, she managed to say, "The – ser- serpent – seduced – me."

The One who stood before them gazed at them with those sorrowful eyes and nodded once sharply, glad that they had been forthright in their answers.

He raised one hand. The snake appeared from nowhere. Then Adam and his wife gasped: the illusion of the reptile that this creature had masqueraded as was lifted and they now beheld an alien being, whose form they struggled to make sense of, before the creature's appearance changed like a dæmon its form to resolve into a tall, proud, cruel-faced man.

"You," It hissed with hatred towards God.

God's eyes blazed as He addressed the malevolent creature.

"Because you've done this, you're cursed! Cursed to slink on your belly and eat dirt all your life. I'm declaring war between you and the Woman, between your offspring and hers. He'll wound your head, you'll wound his heel." So saying, He held up His hands so that the marks could be seen.

The apparition spat at the One before it faded into thin air. The damned spirit would do as its naturally blighted nature would have it do – to be treacherous, underhanded and feed on lies, ever since it was cast from God's presence, which in itself was a curse, in aeons past.


	4. Chapter 4

God sighed as He turned to the Woman. "My daughter," he said sadly, "From now on, you will give birth to your children with difficulty and pain. You will want to please your husband, but he will lord it over you."

Adam cringed as his Father looked at him. "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from, the ground is now cursed." He gestured towards the grass-covered ground. "The very ground is cursed because of you. Getting food from the ground will be as painful as childbearing will be for your wife; you will be working in pain all your life long. The ground will sprout thorns and weeds. You will get your food the hard way – by the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the ground, dead and buried. You are dust, and to dust you and your dæmon shall return."

With a start, Adam and his wife realised that they were alone. One moment the One who had walked with them every day was there, declaring the consequences of their actions; the next, He was gone - as if He had never been there, though the echo of His last words seemed to reverberate around their leafy surroundings. The silence, which used to be comforting before they took that fateful action of eating the fruit, now unnerved them. Adam turned to his wife, his face a ghostly mask. He swallowed and his eyes dropped to the large swell of her belly. Then he looked back up and he embraced her, holding her close. He tried to smile bravely.

"You are called Eve. You are the mother of the living."

"This is so uncomfortable," complained Eve as she tried to adjust her poorly made fig-leaf garment. Adam did not reply, though he too chafed at the irritating contact of the leaves on his skin. For some time now they had felt a pressing need to move constantly, to find a way to leave the Garden that had been their home. While they had been at rest, their dæmons would pace endlessly, up and down, up and down, and would break the routine only when they set off once more. They felt they knew why; it held too many bitter memories for them. They were back along the banks of the river. They caught sight of the back of a head belonging to someone they knew very well. Adam felt Eve's nails digging into his arm. "It's all right," he tried to reassure her, despite the fact he was afraid himself. "He already knows we're here, so we might just as well see what He has come here for."

Then the One stood up and met their eyes with His own. He smiled for a moment, His affection for them clearly evident, and then He gestured to the nearby boulders by the curve of the river.

"See! You will no longer need these fig-leaf garments; I have made for you clothing which will suit you more."

"Thank you," said Eve quietly. Her husband and she examined the garments laid out for them; the material was clearly derived from the hide of some animal. They glanced around to see whether He would watch while they changed; but He was gone once more. Their dæmons shifted uneasily on their feet. The couple swiftly put on the new, comfortable clothing, discarding the hideous fig-leaf garments aside and departed once more.

The Entity watched them from above, from below, from their sides, from every angle possible and more dimensions that only He could fathom. He watched them. He watched them at the same time He watched the universe explode into existence with a bang, as He watched the first cells pop into existence, as He watched the dinosaurs die out, as He watched the apes descend from the trees for the first time, as He watched the explorers who would leave Africa and would in the future give rise to Adam in the Middle East, as He watched Adam discovering his dæmon - the first of his line; as He watched Abraham's convoy as he travelled to an unknown country, as He watched the wars of the nation of Israel, as He watched the Roman Empire annexing the region, as He watched Himself as a carpenter from Galilee, as He watched the Crusades unfolding, as He watched Columbus sail to the New World, as He watched the World Wars tear Europe apart, as He watched the rise of globalisation, as He watched the rise of the beast and the false prophet, as He watched the New Jerusalem descending from heaven to the renewed earth after the Judgement, as He simultaneously watched the trillions of moments and events throughout history. He was outside of time and space, and yet He worked within and interacted with it. He knew how the universe would unfold and He was pleased with it; He knew all. The man, the first of his line who knew he had a dæmon, and his wife, would be sent out into the wider world to populate the earth; one of their line would rise up to crush the head of that malicious creature that had so easily led astray His beloved creation. All who lived before that time of the sacrifice would be redeemed just as those after. All was it should be.

Adam and Eve stood on top of the crest, looking down on the unfamiliar terrain. They looked at the fearsome warrior, who held a sharp metal-looking instrument, which the angel had called a sword. The dread champion nodded at them.

"Good fortune to you."

"And you," replied Adam. They knew that they and their descendants would never return – the dread warrior, the cherubim, would see to that.

Eve looked at the man she loved and smiled. Then she slowly clasped her hand into his. Her dæmon nuzzled Adam's with its muzzle. Together, they set out into the big, wide world.


End file.
